Daily Spelt Loaf

As well as being a cookbook fanatic, I have a fetish for flours. Find me a new variety and I’ll have a bag in my basket before you can say ‘Paul Hollywood’! I love finding recipes that contain lesser used flours like spelt, buckwheat and Khorasan. Even the thought of a new rye recipe gets my creative juices flowing better than your average strong white ever could.

This loaf evolved from a pure spelt loaf, made with only wholegrain spelt flour into this recipe, which contains strong white flour (and if you like, wholemeal too) as well as wholegrain spelt. Using spelt flour alone produces a loaf which has an interesting flavour and texture – lighter in colour and crumb than a wholemeal loaf, with a greater depth of flavour than a plain white one. All things considered, it was its distinct flavour that caused me to want to use a mix of flours for this loaf. Pure spelt bread is lovely eaten with a meal, to mop up delicious casserole juices or such like; but for me, its characteristic flavour needs dumbing down for use as toast or sandwich bread – which my ‘daily loaf’ frequently is!

This is not to say that this loaf isn’t deliciously flavoursome. It just has a more neutral (for want of a better word!) taste, which provides a delicious base for other ingredients.

Note: You needn’t add the Greek honey if you’re a purist and prefer to stick to the core ingredients. However, I think it adds something special to this everyday loaf and complements the nutty notes in this loaf.

Ingredients

• 205g Wholegrain Spelt Flour
• 300g Strong White Bread Flour (for a wholegrain loaf, reduce the quantity of white flour to 200g and add 100g of Strong Wholemeal Flour)
• 1 tsp Salt (I add a generous teaspoon)
• 1 tsp Fast Action Dried Yeast
• 1 tbsp Greek Honey
• 1 tbsp Olive Oil
• 400 ml warm water

To make the bread

1. Mix the flours together in a large bowl, I do this roughly and by hand.
2. Add the salt to one side of the bowl and the yeast to the other. Then drizzle over the honey.
3. Pour over the warm water (the temperature of which needn’t be measured, it should feel slightly warm to the touch) and begin to mix using one hand.
4. Add the olive oil and continue to bring the mixture together until you have a ‘shaggy’ (to quote HFW – but this is the most useful, if not very technical, term I have come across to describe the dough at this stage!) dough.
5. Tip the dough out onto a lightly oiled surface (you can use flour, but be careful not to add much more at this stage as your bread could become dense and mealy).
6. Knead for 10-20 minutes (I always knead by hand, but feel free to use a mixer if you have one) until the dough is elastic and appears to have a sheen to it. If your dough feels wet and sticky, you could add a touch more flour, but try to knead through this stage as a wetter dough produces a more open crumb with a lighter texture.
7. Leave to rise in a lightly oiled bowl until roughly doubled in size (approx 1hr). I place the bowl in a large plastic bag, inflate it slightly and then use an Ikea plastic clip to seal it, stopping any draft from halting the proving process.
8. Since I use this loaf daily, mainly for sandwiches and toast, I like to bake it in a 2lb tin, but you go ahead and get creative with your shaping if the feeling takes you! (See future post on shaping bread). I lightly oil the tin and my bread hasn’t gotten stuck yet!
9. To shape, tip the risen dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Press all over with the palms of your hands to knock out any air bubbles. Shape into a rough rectangle. With one of the long edges closest to you, fold in at either side so that the left and right-hand edges overlap slightly. Now flatten slightly so it matches the length of your tin.
10. Taking the long edge closest to you, roll up like a Swiss roll so you have one long seam along the dough.
11. With the seam facing downwards, place the dough into the tin. (This method is very similar to Paul Hollywood’s in ‘How to Bake’, which also has great pictures that may help if you’ve had problems shaping in the past.)
12. Place the tin in a large plastic bag and leave to prove for 1/2 an hour to an hour or until doubled in size.
13. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 220 degrees Celsius. Place a baking tray in the bottom of the oven.
14. When your dough has doubled in size, place a kettle on to boil and pour the boiling water into the baking tray – this will create a steamy atmosphere, which will produce a loaf with a thin but crunchy crust with a nice shine to it.
15. Dust your loaf with flour and make several diagonal slashes across the top (I use a sharp serrated bread knife to do this).
16. Place your tin in the middle of the oven to bake for 30-35 minutes. To check if your loaf is baked, turn out of the tin and tap – if you hear a hollow sound your loaf is ready, if you hear a dull thud it needs longer in the oven!

I really hope you enjoy this loaf as much as my family and I do! I would love to see pictures of your loaves and, of course, hear how you got on using this recipe!

Happy baking, but more importantly – happy eating! 🙂

Baking Books: An Obsession.

Just a few!

I have already hinted at my uncontrollable cookbook-buying habit. The delivery man from Amazon can actually be heard saying “you again!” as I open the door, hand eagerly outstretched ready to snatch at the plastic toothpick; scrawling my name whilst simultaneously tearing the package to shreds to reveal my new purchase.

I’ve bought some cracking new baking books recently. ‘How to Bake’ by the Silver Fox himself, Paul Hollywood is a winner for me. I love the layout of this book. The preamble to each chapter is absorbing and I appreciate the fact he includes the little details which make all the difference, like the number of loaves, preparation and baking time clearly at the top of each recipe. Some argue that this is a book for the amateur baker, but I disagree. For me, there can never be too many hints and tips about baking, even if they do concern the basics like how to knead and prove your dough. All bakers have a slightly different slant on how to conduct these elemental tasks. Therefore I collect hints and tips just as I collect the recipes themselves. They change the fabric of my baking experience; as I test out the ones I like the sound of, discarding those which bring nothing to my endeavor and incorporating the morsels which will enhance the taste and beauty of my future bakes.

Another book I am wholly impressed with is ‘Nordic Bakery’ by Miisa Mink. Now this may not appeal to the more mainstream bakers among you, as this is, as the title suggests, a collection of traditional (mainly Finnish) Nordic recipes. I won’t go too far into why I have a fervent interest in the baking of our Northern European friends (see future posts…), but I was specifically looking for traditional Finnish recipes which I could practice and replicate in order to evoke many a happy memory of the country. This book certainly delivers. It contains recipes for many of the traditional treats you see in cafes and homes all over Finland. My mother-in-law (who is Finnish), even commented that her Mummo (grandmother) used to bake many of the recipes for her when she was a child. I have tried the Karelian Pies, Potato Flatbreads and the Date Cake and all are out of this world! A definite must-have for anyone wanting  to discover more about Nordic baking or indeed anyone who enjoys delicious baked goodies!

When I first started baking, in my naivety, I believed that when you buy a new book and follow one of the, often beautifully presented and well laid out, recipes therein, the fruits of your labour will necessarily match up to the mouth-watering picture nestled attractively beside it. Surely any recipe which boasts a product, the following of which (without tampering) it will never produce is an issue for Trading Standards? After all, if I knew beforehand that the recipes in a given book were almost without exception full of errors, typos and untested claims; there isn’t a yeast-spore’s chance in a bag of salt that I would give up my hard earned cash in exchange for it! My veil of ignorance has since been lifted! Let’s start with Nigella Lawson’s ‘How to be a Domestic Goddess’. Now it is, among other things, Nigella’s gift of the gab which most entices me to buy each new book she releases; but after ‘How to Eat’, I have also come to expect well tested, trustworthy recipes. Certainly not in this case! This book is full of unforgivable typos (whoever added 1 tablespoon of salt to a 500g loaf?) which will sadly lead to the unsuspecting baker wasting good ingredients and suffering unpalatable results. I will red-flag more books which are the audacious ambassadors of untested recipes soon (see future posts).

In the meantime, my advice to anyone afflicted with this cookbook obsession is twofold:

1) Read the reviews before you buy! If there are shameless errors in a book, the brigade of trusty reviewers are sure to tell us! And become a reviewer yourself – the more of us who air our opinions, the more rounded a picture we will be privy to when we put our buyers hat on – and hence the better value for money we will receive!

2) If your pockets aren’t as deep as Mary Poppins’ bag, steer clear of Amazon’s ‘One-Click’ feature! Should you have the misfortune to be as bedeviled as I am by the baking-book-bug you will surely bankrupt yourself within a year!